KARACHI: An assistant professor at Karachi University’s psychology department was suspended on Friday after the university administration received a letter from the Federal Investigating Agency (FIA) about his arrest for repeatedly posting fabricated photos of a female teacher on a Facebook page.

Farhan Kamrani, assistant professor at KU’s psychology department, was booked under Section 21 of the Pakistan Electronic Crime Act and Section 500 (defamation) of the Pakistan Penal Code, said FIA deputy director (cyber crimes) Mohammad Ahmed Zaeem.

“The teacher has been immediately suspended and his salary stopped when the university received FIA’s complaint against him today. He has been accused of cyber crime,” said KU registrar Moazzam Ali Khan while declining to share specific details of the case. However, he added, the university would inquire the matter before taking further action against him.

The complainant, who has been working as a part-time teacher at the KU and three other universities, said she did not know the suspect at all. She had been under stress for the past two years, she said, adding that she had lodged her first complaint against the person in February 2015.

Sources said the FIA authorities arrested the suspect a couple of days ago after he had “confessed” to have committed the offence. They said he used to post the links of fabricated objectionable content about the female teacher on the Facebook page of a private university.

Upon investigation, the FIA found that the suspect had been operating a “pornographic page” and he used to post links of that page on private university’s page. While tracing the links of that page, the FIA found that it was being operated by someone from Block 8 of Gulistan-i-Jauhar.

The FIA officer said the cyber crime circle of the agency approached the Facebook authorities to find the details of that page after receiving the complaint. “Then we collected details from the internet service provider that was being used by one of its subscribers to administrate that page. After connecting the dots we reached to the suspect who confessed to the crime, which led to his arrest,” said FIA deputy director Ahmed Zaeem.

‘Mental torture for two years’

Mother of four, the victim has been working as a part-time teacher at Karachi University and Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology besides two private institutions, Greenwich University and Awaz Institute of Media Sciences, since 2009.

“I have been under huge stress for the past two years. I had lodged four complaints against him with the FIA,” she said.

She added that her fabricated pictures were posted on a page and linked to the university’s Facebook page.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2016